WHO CAN APPLY

Graduating seniors of Monument Mountain Regional High School who are entering their first year of a two-year or four-year nationally accredited college or university with a particular interest in science, engineering, history or creative writing.

SCHOLARSHIP INFORMATION

The Charles and Elinore Agar Scholarship has been established to honor a local family that started a business in 1932 and was active in the Great Barrington community.

Charles William Agar was born on a farm in Sheffield in 1908, the youngest of nine children. In his youth, he attended school in Sheffield, traveled cross country to California and worked his way back. Then, he worked on rural electrification in Maine and in a garage in Pittsfield. In 1932 he married Elinore Lilian Warner, the daughter of Charles Warner and Jennie Woodin Warner. She, too, was born in 1908 and grew up on a farm in Seekonk, a section of Great Barrington. She attended a one-room school and Bryant School, graduating from the former Searles High School in 1926. She attended Berkshire Business College in Pittsfield and worked as a bookkeeper at Cooley’s Market in Pittsfield and later at Grand Union in Great Barrington.

In 1932 the couple started the Charles W. Agar, Inc. oil company and over the years were active members of the community. Mr. Agar’s community service included being a past president of Rotary and receiving the Paul Harris Lifetime Achievement Award from Rotary International, managing the Great Barrington Horse Show, establishing a youth building on Bridge Street and being a Mason. Mrs. Agar was a member of the Great Barrington Historical Commission, the GB Historical Society, the Visiting Nurse Association, and other organizations. At the very end of her life she wrote a memoir, “Recollections of a New England Country Girl,” which received enthusiastic reviews in the Berkshire Eagle and other local papers – and is still available. She did bookkeeping for the oil business until a year before her death in 1998. Charles Agar died in 1984. The Agar’s four children have established this memorial scholarship in their honor for local students whose aspirations reflect their special interests – Charles Agar’s in all things technical and Elinore Agar’s gifts of history and writing.